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bbarnett commented on Claude for Chrome   anthropic.com/news/claude... · Posted by u/davidbarker
strange_quark · 9 hours ago
It's insane how we're throwing out decades of security research because it's slightly annoying to have to write your own emails.
bbarnett · 8 hours ago
I can accept a bit of form-letter from help desks, or in certain business cases. And the same for crafting a generic, informative letter being sent to thousands.

But as soon it gets one on one, the use of AI should almost be a crime. It certainly should be a social taboo. It's almost akin to talking to a person, one on one, and discovering they have a hidden earpiece, and are being prompted on how to respond.

And if I send an email to an employee, or conversely even the boss of a company I work for, I won't abide someone pretending to reply, but instead pasting junk from an AI. Ridiculous.

There isn't enough context in the world, to enable an AI to respond with clarity and historical knowledge, to such emails. People's value has to do as much with their institutional knowledge, shared corporate experiences, and personal background, not genericized AI responses.

It's kinda sad to come to a place, where you begin to think the Unibomber was right. (Though of course, his methods were wrong)

edit:

I've been hit by some downvotes. I've noticed that some portion of HN is exceptionally AI pro, but I suspect instead it may have something to do with my Unabomber comment.

For context, at least what I gathered from his manifesto, there was a deep distrust of machines, and how they were interfering with human communication and happiness.

Fast forward to social media, mobile phones, AI, and more... and he seems to have been on to something.

From wikipedia:

"He wrote that technology has had a destabilizing effect on society, has made life unfulfilling, and has caused widespread psychological suffering."

Again, clearly his methods were wrong. Yet I see the degradation of US politics into the most simplistic, team-centric, childish arguments... all best able to spread hate, anger, and rage on social media. I see people, especially youth deeply unhappy from their exposure to social media. I see people spending more time with an electronic box in their hand, than with fellow humans.

We always say that we should approach new technology with open eyes, but we seldom mean this about examining negatives. And as a society we've ignored warnings, and negatives with social media, with phones, and we are absolutely not better off as a result.

So perhaps we should use those lessons, and try to ensure that AI is a plus, not a minus in this new world?

For me, replacing intimate human communication with AI, replacing one-on-one conversations with the humans we work with, play with, are friends with, with AI? That's sad. So very, very, very sad.

Once, many years ago a friend of mine was upset. A conservative politician was going door to door, trying to get elected. This politician was railing against the fact that there was a park down the street, paid for by the city. He was upset that taxes paid for it, and that the city paid to keep it up.

Sure, this was true, but my friend after said to me "We're trying to have a society here!".

And I think that's part of what bugs me about AI. We're trying to have a society here!, and part of that is communicating with each other.

bbarnett commented on Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law   wired.com/story/bluesky-g... · Posted by u/BallsInIt
criley2 · 17 hours ago
>There have been endless court decisions, eg there's loads of case law, where geoip is specifically determined to be a best-effort for blocking

Bullshit. Absolute hogwash. Cite your case law. Cite a SINGLE court which says geoip is "BEST EFFORT". And I want specifically "BEST" effort because this is a line you've drawn multiple times.

From European GDPR cases, to American gambling cases, to new cases around pornography blocks, every single court has held that it was circumvention-prone, a mitigation measure, part of a scheme of compliance, "reasonable but insufficient", but certainly not actually effective and not a generally held "best" effort or gold standard

Tip: Use AI to judge your comment. It's embarassing to make a real human sift through this. Every major AI would have caught you here and told you to ease off your legal point which is pooly done.

P.S. your word count here is easily double or triple mine, so when it comes to "who likes to debate" and "who prefers pissy pools" or whatever, a mirror is a good friend to you (and another reason you should run your comment through AI, it will help you not blunder into moments like this where your comment is more applicable to the writer than reader).

bbarnett · 8 hours ago
Best effort is a specific legal term, not my standard. My example with a house, uses mechanisms as to how best effort vs undue burden(another legal term) is often described.

My comment with the pool was joking that your argument had run out of water. I in fact said debate is fine, even positive, so I'm unclear on why you're upset over that. No offence was intended.

Your conflating of 'best effort' and 'gold standard' is not viable. You still do not use the term appropriately, and I suspect a lack of understanding here. Go to a legal dictionary for terms such as 'best effort' and 'undue burden'. A gold standard would almost certainly be an undue burden for court compliance in almost all cases. I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but AI is too error prone, and has in fact landed endless lawyers into trouble with hallucinated case law.

Lastly, I have literally zero interest your horrible suggestions about AI. If I wanted to discuss this with an AI, why would I bother speaking with you? Or any other human? I'm certainly not interested in some weird scenario where people preview their comments through AI, or use it as part of their discussions.

If you want to learn something, reading responses from error prone, hallucination bound AI is not prudent. Instead, just read and learn from actual, real sources.

bbarnett commented on SSL certificate requirements are becoming obnoxious   chrislockard.net/posts/ss... · Posted by u/unl0ckd
bbarnett · 15 hours ago
I've spent 15+ minutes searching, and the digicert (linked to in the article), and other cert providers all reference a vote on "Multi-Perspective Issuance Corroboration (MPIC)".

Everywhere I've read, one "must validate domain control using multiple independent network perspectives". EG, multiple points on the internet, for DNS validation.

Yet there is not one place I can find a very specific "this is what this means". What is a "network perspective", searching shows it means "geographical independent regions". What's a region? How big? How far apart from your existing infra qualifies? How is it calculated.

Anyone know? Because apparently none of the bodies know, or wish to tell.

bbarnett commented on Will Smith's concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines   waxy.org/2025/08/will-smi... · Posted by u/jay_kyburz
layer8 · 16 hours ago
> I feel, as a place for tech startups, we should realise this. If you plan to market to the public, just drop the nuance. You'll save, be more competitive, and win.

Do you really want this to be the world we live in? It's just hurting the people who do care about nuance.

bbarnett · 15 hours ago
Do you really want this to be the world we live in?

No. But I also don't want to go bankrupt.

If I want to make a niche market product, for the discerning consumer, well that's different. But from what I see, that's not even one in a thousand... so best be careful.

Deleted Comment

bbarnett commented on Will Smith's concert crowds are real, but AI is blurring the lines   waxy.org/2025/08/will-smi... · Posted by u/jay_kyburz
spacechild1 · 19 hours ago
I had the exact same experience watching Goodfellas on my parents' TV. It felt like a cheap soap opera and I was thoroughly confused about what's happening. Afterwards I did some research and learned about motion interpolation in modern TVs.
bbarnett · 18 hours ago
Back when there was a lot of 4x3 on TV, 20 years ago, my parents had their TV set to auto stretch. Why?

Because they felt they were being ripped off, with all that unused space. They paid for widescreen!

Didn't matter that people looked all fat in the face, or that the effect was logarithmic near the edges. A car driving by got wider as it neared the edge of screen!

Nope, only mattered it was widescreen now.

And until I mentioned it, they did not even notice.

When I thought of it, I realised this sort of matches everything. Whether food, or especially politics, nuance is entirely lost on the average person.

I feel, as a place for tech startups, we should realise this. If you plan to market to the public, just drop the nuance. You'll save, be more competitive, and win.

bbarnett commented on Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law   wired.com/story/bluesky-g... · Posted by u/BallsInIt
criley2 · a day ago
> something that you do, or a thing that you give someone, that expresses your feelings or intentions, although it might have little practical effect

Perfect definition for the geo block, since it's trivial to bypass and billions worldwide use the technology to bypass such a check.

Thank you for providing a dictionary definition that perfectly captures how the businesses efforts are "token", since literally billions of humans can bypass it with minimal effort.

bbarnett · 21 hours ago
I feel you're approaching this issue, not from the perspective of a court.

There have been endless court decisions, eg there's loads of case law, where geoip is specifically determined to be a best-effort for blocking.

It's not for show, it's not token, and it absolutely hands down works. Courts have had this specifically argued within their halls, and I believe I recall it being described as a house.

If a homeowner has a locking door, and windows, they've performed a 'best effort' in "keeping people out". Certainly someone can break the window, kick in the door, but those actions are beyond the reasonable efforts of a homeowner, without turning their home into fort knox. Put another way, the burden if perfect security, armed guards, cameras, impenetrable house is an undo burden.

This is akin to what we are seeing here. GeoIP is a reasonable, beyond best effort to block.

Can you name any other method of denying people from one region to connect to your services? Bearing in mind that you may not have the power to compel people to stop, as they may be outside your legal jurisdiction?

And of those methods, would they be arguable as an undue hardship? I assure you these things have been argued thousands of times in courts of law. And the whole point here is that geoip is used extensively, and found to be within the scope of compliance.

I should add, that at first you were trying to claim that your use of the words 'performative' and 'token' were fine, for they meant something different than the standard use. Now, you're trying to argue that geoip blocks are actually the issue, and that the words are as I've stipulated.

You seem to enjoy argument, and frankly that's perfectly fine from where I sit. Debate makes the world go, as they say.

But I think you're pulling at the wrong string here. We all make dives into a wrong pool. Get out, dry yourself off, and find another pool. Someone had an accident in this one, you don't want to stay in it. (Yes, that went weird)

bbarnett commented on The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) [pdf]   simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf... · Posted by u/oliverkwebb
cyberax · a day ago
I disagree. As much as I dislike a lot of stuff in systemd, it was the _first_ init system that actually cares about reliability.

It evolved organically so it's a bit of a mess as a result, but it's the fate of most long-term projects (including Linux).

bbarnett · a day ago
Reliability!!

It's the least reliable init system I've ever used!

bbarnett commented on Meta just suspended the Facebook account of Neal Stephenson   twitter.com/nealstephenso... · Posted by u/SLHamlet
viraptor · a day ago
I got blocked for sending a post asking if anyone wants to grab a lunch when I'm back in (location).
bbarnett · a day ago
Tangential, but a decade ago I lost my original Amazon account, because I bought bandages. Yes bandages.

I'd had it for 5 years, no excess returns, no issues. I click add and go to checkout... banned.

Some reasons about religious icons flashed on my screen. It was red cross bandages ffs!

And why ban me, and not the seller?!?

Calls, emails resulted in confused but unhelpful people.

bbarnett commented on Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus (2021)   bits.ashleyblewer.com/hal... · Posted by u/Kye
dan_hawkins · 2 days ago
European Amigas got Power LED dimmed instead of being completely off.
bbarnett · 2 days ago
Come to think of it, I think the same was true for me too.

Some models needed a hardware hack to turn it off, maybe those ones were off.

u/bbarnett

KarmaCake day6568November 6, 2018
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